Ulterior Motive’s James Davidson on the tech behind The Journeyman
“Because Ulterior Motive signed to Metalheadz, we ended up working with Goldie on a couple of projects, engineering and producing. He told us that he was starting work on a new album and said, ‘Tell me what you need. Computers, software, synths… stuff that you’re comfortable with’.
“When I arrived at his studio in Thailand, there was a fully loaded iMac with Logic X and Pro Tools, plus a lot of the synths I like working with – FM8, Massive, the Korg M1 plugin. I specifically asked for the M1 because I wanted to keep some of the vibe from Timeless. It was the same with the 808 samples, which came from a TR-8.
“The idea was to get in the studio for a month and, hopefully, come out with half a dozen songs. We came out with 11! I’ve never had that in the studio before; total focus, with the music just rolling and rolling. We were so excited that we didn’t really take a day off. We couldn’t wait to get back in the studio and see what would happen next.
“It was put together almost entirely inside the computer, but there is a lot of live stuff on there, including the drums. Goldie had this idea of putting together a bunch of classic breaks – James Brown, Amen, Humpty Dump – ReCycling them and handing them over to a drummer to play back live. We came away from Battery Studios with 80GB of drums, which I then turned into a bunch of new breaks – live breaks that we’d created.
“Breaks and drums are very much my thing in the studio, and I’ve spent a lot of time working out how to get the best from them. In the early days, I used to be a slave to frequencies – I’d analyse a loop and start negativenotching all over the place to try and get it as flat as possible. But, after a while, I kind of realised that flattening it out was literally taking all the life out of it.
“With loops and drums, there is no magic blueprint. Let’s take somebody from the DnB world who makes brilliant loops – somebody like Noisia. Even if they give me a loop and I notch the kick at 80 and 120, with the snare at 200 and a 5k shelf – all the stuff you’re ‘supposed’ to do – it doesn’t mean the loop is automatically going to work in my song. It might sound terrible! Production is rarely about one-size-fits-all. It’s totally dependent on the material you’re working with.
“If I do find that I’ve got some frequency stuff going on between the loop and bass – or other parts of the song – my favourite ‘get out of jail’ tool is Wavesfactory Trackspacer. Instead of the usual ducking and pumping, this seems work its magic with a bit more subtlety; as if it’s carving and sculpting the sound.
“Finally, I have to mention the studio location, too. When I arrived at Goldie’s place, I couldn’t believe it. The house is right on the edge of the rainforest, overlooking this endless, lush, green landscape. I know drum ’n’ bass came out of an urban setting, but waking up to that wonderful view every morning injected something very natural… very pure. It’s amazing how much that contributed to the feel of the album.”